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An Internet for Your Oven
The Internet isn't just for people anymore. Cisco, Sun and other tech vendors have joined together to further the cause of smart objects by creating the IP for Smart Objects (IPSO) Alliance. The IPSO Alliance focuses on objects equipped with sensors and/or actuators that transmit information for analysis. This might include a thermometer located near an airport runway that tells a computer in air traffic control about the local temperature, for example.
Such equipment has been growing in popularity lately, thanks to the demand from homeowners and businesses for increased automation and energy efficiency. Other users of such equipment include factories concerned with maintenance and hospitals monitoring their patients. The members of the IPSO Alliance therefore saw the need for a body that will perform interoperability tests, document the use of new IP-based technologies, conduct marketing activities and serve as an information repository for those trying to understand the role of IP in networks of physical objects.
Naturally, the IPSO Alliance also plans to show how networks of all sorts of objects could benefit from being able to use IP. They plan to offer monthly technical web seminars to explain the technology and help participants find ways of using it. Strangely, the Internet-connected coffee maker (which was recently discovered to be vulnerable to hacking) was never mentioned.
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Japan Working on Space Elevator
Arthur C. Clarke fans, rejoice: Japan is devoting itself to turning one of the late science fiction writer's dreams into reality. It's one of the more challenging ones, too: a space elevator. If successful, rather than blasting off into space, future astronauts will merely climb aboard and press the up button. They would then ride on strong, light cables tethered to the ground up to a satellite docking station 22,000 miles away in geosynchronous orbit.
The best part is that a space elevator could carry just about any kind of cargo,
and would require perhaps a hundredth of the energy needed to launch
the space shuttle. Just like traveling abroad, anyone will be able
to ride the elevator into space, said Shuichi Ono, chairman of the
Japan Space Elevator Association. Success in building a space elevator
has been elusive so far, however, despite several competing projects
and prizes offered for breakthroughs.
Japan is playing host to an international conference in November on building a space elevator, with the goal of drawing up a timetable. It reportedly believes that it will cost one trillion yen (more than $1.8 billion) to build such an elevator. The cables will present the biggest challenge: they must be very light, very strong (180 times as strong as steel), able to withstand projectiles, and very long not only will they have to reach orbit, but they will also have to reach a counterweight to maintain their tension. The answer may lie in the use of carbon nanotubes, which Japan's big textile companies are starting to learn how to mass produce. Here's hoping we'll have something better to listen to on the way up than Muzak!
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Rubber Ducks to Track Glacier Melt
Who would have thought something as humble as a rubber duck could assist in a science experiment? Alberto Behar, that's who. The NASA rocket scientist released 90 of the bathtub buddies at the Jaobshavn Glacier to help find out what's happening inside the huge hunk of ice. Thought to be the source of the iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912, the glacier is of scientific interest because it moves so fast; it discharges nearly seven percent of the ice that comes off of Greenland every year.
Behan wants to answer the question of how melting water moves through the ice. It is believed that the summer sun melts ice on top of the surface, creating pools that flow into moulins, tubular holes that may carry the water to the glacier's underside. Once there, it may act as a lubricant, making the glacier move faster. But as of yet, there is no proof of this.
That's why Behar lowered the rubber ducks and a football-sized probe armed with a CPS transmitter and other equipment into a moulin. Each duck is labeled with the words science experiment and reward in three languages, along with an email address. The ducks received their send-off in August; so far, if anyone has found them, they haven't sent an email to report the discovery and claim the reward. Realistically, the probe will give the scientists even more information than the ducks, such as its position, the temperature and pressure, and how fast it is moving; faster speeds could even indicate the location of waterfalls and cascades. But the probe would be just one data point; in theory, the ducks could provide up to 90 more pieces of information about where all that glacial water ends up.
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